“Tucker’s Honky-Taco Will Gladly Donate To Hurricane Relief As Long As You Buy Something From Us” by Ben Hargrave

Tucker’s Honky-Taco is
a worldwide fast food institution known not just for pioneering the assembly
line guacamole production process, but also for being dedicated to social
corporate responsibility by committing acts of benevolence when disaster
strikes. That’s why when Hurricane Todd ravaged the southeastern seaboard from
Piney Bluff, Georgia to Sawgrass, Florida a week ago, killing thousands,
displacing millions, and causing billions of dollars in damage, Tucker’s
Honky-Taco knew it was our civic duty to donate money to hurricane relief as
long as you buy something from us.

Now, you’re probably
thinking: Wait a second, doesn’t Tucker’s Honky-Taco have over 40,000
locations that generate yearly revenue in excess of $4 billion, amounting to a
market capitalization around $100 billion?Why should I have to buy
anything just so Tucker’s makes a donation? If so, congratulations!
You’ve somehow managed to make the fourth deadliest natural disaster in United
States history about yourself. Great job, you jerk.

But don’t fret; you
can atone for your sins by visiting a Tucker’s Honky-Taco, where the dollar
amount you’ll spend is directly proportional to how much you care about the
victims of Hurricane Todd!

Supporting those in
need is as easy as buying one of our classic Loco Loco Burritos for $11.50, or
anything else on our 88-item menu, but nothing from our secret menu. Doing so
will trigger our assistance: contributing one one-hundredth of a penny of the
purchase to charity. At the end of the day, we have to look out for number one
(us), unlike the #ToddSeven, who died saving a sinking school bus full of high
schoolers from the Myrtle Beach Anime Club.

To honor them, for a
limited time only we’re offering a #ToddSeven Fiesta Taco Platter: seven
different kinds of finger-licking meat and veggie tacos absolutely drowning in
our house-made chile con queso, all for $21.99. It won’t fill the hole in our
hearts but it will fill your stomach.

Time is running out.
Todd survivors and their families desperately need you to buy – at the very
least – one Loco Loco Burrito. Or, heck, buy 100 and throw a burrito fiesta in
their name! Many of their names, as you may well know, are being chiseled into
a massive, cartoonish sombrero made of marble to memorialize those whose lives
were lost after they were sucked into the Atlantic. The monument was designed
after our mascot Tucker’s famous lucky hat that is usually filled with a
Cadillac Margarita, except this time, it’s brimming with water to symbolize
salty tears.

Remember, every moment
you waste not buying a Tostada Estupendo or a Quesadilla Divertida is
potentially another life lost due to your inaction. So if you’re having second
thoughts about the cause, we want to remind you of the tragedy of 15-year-old
Graham Fandy – a Tucker’s Honky-Taco super fan and the focus of the Boston
Globe’s heart-wrenching cover story, “The Last Living Fandy” – because he will
require donations to afford a lifetime of therapy after he’s done identifying
the bodies of his family that continue to wash up on the shores of Cucumber
Island.

For reasons unknown,
some confused individuals are mistaking our earnest desire to help with a
devious lust to make money off of human suffering. That’s why Tucker’s has made
a firm commitment to elucidate that this incentive is purely an act of
compassion and absolutely not a clever ruse to cash in on a catastrophe and
receive amazing free publicity. The fact that our revenue has quadrupled and
we’ve gained 11 million organic Twitter followers since Monday is as irrelevant
as MoviePass is for Todd survivors: all movie theaters caught in Todd’s path
are impromptu morgues now.

Despite our compassionate intentions, Tucker’s has been shocked to find certain heartless souls are actively boycotting Tucker’s Honky-Taco restaurants, saying we’re, “taking advantage of a holy mess,” “profiting off pain,” and that our, “Red Snapper Tacos are actually tilapia.” Those accusations are as false as the theory floating around on Reddit that we created Hurricane Todd using weaponized cloud sourcing techniques at an offshore black site laboratory. That couldn’t be further from the truth. The best our Honky-Taco scientists could conjure up was a spring shower; the technology simply isn’t there yet.

Look, Tucker’s is a
company run by humans who care about humanity under the natural assumption that
they are buying our food or beverages, and we started this campaign to help
save as many potential/still-living customers as we can without giving away
money unconditionally. Truth be told, Tucker’s largest consumer base is exactly
where Todd struck, and if we lose them, it would be utterly devastating to our
bottom line and – most importantly – the bottom line of our hearts, which
definitely exist.

So, what do you say?
Feeling a little Loco Loco today?

We sure are! Now
vamos!

————

Ben Hargrave is a comedian, writer, and actor in Brooklyn whose writing has appeared on McSweeney’s, Splitsider, The Hard Times, The Tusk, Janice, The Higgs Weldon, Points In Case, Funny or Die, and Above Average. He also makes his own peanut butter and excels at farting around.